Ten leading British charities today launched a televised appeal for famine-struck Niger where nearly a million children under the age of five are facing starvation.

A combination of locust swarms, which destroyed vegetation causing the death of livestock, and the failure of the rains has left much of west Africa on the brink of a humanitarian disaster.

Niger's 12 million population are among the poorest people on the planet. Men in famine-affected villages have travelled far from home in a desperate search for work to buy food for their families, while women have been reduced to boiling grass for porridge and cooking rats in order to feed their children.

Aid workers say that 150,000 children are at serious imminent risk of dying from hunger. Neighbouring countries Mauritania, Mali and Burkina Faso are also at risk.

Today the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) launched television and radio appeals on the BBC and ITV for the public to donate money to pay for feeding centres and aid.

"We need the public to donate whater they can today to help us save lives, " said Brendan Gormley, the chief executive of the DEC, whose ten members include the British Red Cross, Oxfam, Concern and Save the Children.

The public can donate online, by telephone, or by walking into a post office or bank. The musician Myleene Klass and television presenter Simon Amstell will tonight help to man phone lines at the DEC's London call centre. Just £10 can provide rehydration salts for 50 children.

Concern has already started distributing aid in Barmou, a village in the region around Tahoua which has been particularly hard hit by the drought. Rations of high-energy, protein-enriched biscuits and bags of enriched flour were handed to 180 mothers yesterday.

But many mothers left empty-handed, because so far Concern had only received food supplies for children classified as at moderate risk of starvation. Supplies for families had not yet arrived from the United Nations' World Food Programme, which is channelling the food aid.

As trucks carrying the as yet limited supplies of aid slowly make their way out along the dusty tracks of the vast country, Bernard Kouchner, the founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres, yesterday accused the UN of reacting too slowly to Niger's plight.

"I say very clearly - the UN system didn't give us sufficient warning," said M Kouchner. "Moreover, they did not react sufficiently.

"There is a World Food programme, I would really have liked them to have been more attentive. They were there before the others, but not enough."

He accused Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, of failing to highlight Niger's plight during the G8 summit at Gleneagles in Scotland earlier this month. He also made a side-swipe at the Live8 concerts.

"The excellent rock stars Bob Geldof and Bono were supposed to attract the attention on Africa, meanwhile African children were dying," went on M Kouchner. "So it's OK for bullshit, music, and let's say talkative people like the politicians, but action, we need action."

He was critical of France which he said had failed in its responsibility as the former colonial power in the impoverished country.

The UN estimates that 3.5 million of Niger's population, which is 95 per cent Muslim, are threatened by famine. The most affected spots are the area around Tahoua, the region of Tillabery north of Niamey, the Niger capital, and the districts of Maradi and Zinder in the south.

In Maradi, M Kouchner said that he had seen starving children whose thin, brittle limbs and swollen stomachs reminded him of the Biafran famine 40 years ago.

Benoit Miribel, the director general of the Spanish charity ACF, said: "This is an emergency. Once again it is the poorest and the most dependent who are the most vulnerable, those who have no more money, those who are selling their possessions.

"There are groups of people who are only eating once a day. Some others, in other regions further north, are living off roots. We must not wait for things to get worse."

Donate online at www.dec.org.uk, or by phoning the Disasters Emergency Committee on 0870 60 60 900 or by sending a cheque by post to: DEC Niger Crisis Appeal, PO Box 999, London, EC3A 3AA

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